Manila: The hospital bills of a 15-year-old boy who accidentally shot himself in June 18 while taking a selfie are stacking up and his family is struggling to keep up with payments.
The boy, from Batangas, south of Manila, made headlines in the Philippines after he accidentally shot himself while taking a selfie posing with a pistol owned by an uncle.
According to reports, the boy wanted to one up his peers by taking a photo of himself with a gun. The firearm, as it turned out, was loaded with a bullet and unfortunately, as teenager attempted to click his picture, he pressed the gun’s trigger instead of the camera button.
The boy survived after the bullet entered his head and exiting through his nose, reports said, but he has been complaining of pain in his cranium as a result of the traumatic injury.
After being discharged on July 17, he was admitted again to the Batangas Medical Centres’ intensive care unit.
The boy was seen staring blankly by people close to him, the reports said.
The boy’s mother is employed in Oman as a maid and the family is facing a tough time paying the mounting hospital bills. Even without the current bill from the recent hospital stay, they still have P200,000 (Dh16,792) yet to pay from the first hospitalisation.
The boy’s family has appealed to kind-hearted individuals or groups to help them with the bills.
Extraordinary selfies are now the rage among youngsters and the not-so-young. In June, a 14-year-old student fell to her death after she lost her balance while taking a photo of herself and a friend near the staircase landing of their school in suburban Pasig City. Marie Rocello suffered severe head and body injuries after she fell several flights down the staircase on June 30.
The Philippines had been labelled by Time magazine as the World’s Selfie Capital.
Time reported that Pasig City and Makati City in Metro Manila have the most number of selfie takers per 100,000 people with 258 people taking their own pictures at any given time.
